Malaysian Envoy Meets With Kidnappers

Malaysia’s ambassador held a jungle meeting with a leader of the Islamic rebels who have been holding 21 Western and Asian hostages for nearly a month, officials said Friday.

Manzoor Hussein Arshad met with an Abu Sayyaf rebel commander Thursday near the site where the captives are being held on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, two former rebels who escorted him said Friday.

The meeting took place on a forested mountainside as hundreds of armed men stood guard, they said.

Other foreign governments also were considering independent efforts to free the hostages out of growing frustration over the slow start of negotiations, a Philippine government official said. The hostages have urged their governments and international organizations to step in.

The Abu Sayyaf snatched three Germans, two French, two Finns, two South Africans, a Lebanese, 10 Malaysians and a Filipina on April 23 from the Malaysian resort island of Sipadan and took them to Jolo, about an hour away by boat.

But security considerations for formal talks, delayed by clashes between the rebels and troops and by frequent changes in the government negotiating team, have been a sticking point.

“We’re preparing the ground for the meeting, which will take place tomorrow or the next day,” Libyan envoy Rajab Azzarouk, one of the negotiators, said Friday.

Talks with the Abu Sayyaf, the smaller and more extreme of the two Muslim separatist groups in the southern Philippines, could take days, he said.

More than 200,000 people have been displaced by rising violence in Mindanao since last month, when the army attacked a 10-mile stretch of highway held for five years by the larger rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The MILF pulled out of talks and said Friday that it is considering the government’s offer to return to the table May 30.

The Abu Sayyaf group also is holding several Filipino hostages on the nearby island of Basilan.